“Then the scientific point of view in your opinion
hasn’t done away with religion?” I asked
presently.

“The scientific point of view is the religious
point of view,” he said earnestly, “because
it’s the only self-respecting point of view.
I can’t believe that God intended to make a
creature who would not ultimately weigh his beliefs
with his reason instead of accepting them blindly.
That’s immoral, if you like—­especially
in these days.”

“And are there, then, no ’over-beliefs’?”
I said, remembering the expression in something I
had read.

“That seems to me a relic of the method of ancient
science, which was upside down,—­a mere
confusion with faith. Faith and belief are two
different things; faith is the emotion, the steam,
if you like, that drives us on in our search for truth.
Theories, at a stretch, might be identified with ‘over-beliefs’
but when it comes to confusing our theories with facts,
instead of recognizing them as theories, when it comes
to living by ‘over-beliefs’ that have no
basis in reason and observed facts,—­that
is fatal. It’s just the trouble with so
much of our electorate to-day—­unreasoning
acceptance without thought.”

“Then,” I said, “you admit of no
other faculty than reason?”

“I confess that I don’t. A great
many insights that we seem to get from what we call
intuition I think are due to the reason, which is
unconsciously at work. If there were another faculty
that equalled or transcended reason, it seems to me
it would be a very dangerous thing for the world’s
progress. We’d come to rely on it rather
than on ourselves the trouble with the world is that
it has been relying on it. Reason is the mind—­it
leaps to the stars without realizing always how it
gets there. It is through reason we get the self-reliance
that redeems us.”

“But you!” I exclaimed. “You
rely on something else besides reason?”

“Yes, it is true,” he explained gently,
“but that Thing Other-than-Ourselves we feel
stirring in us is power, and that power, or the Source
of it, seems to have given us our reason for guidance—­if
it were not so we shouldn’t have a semblance
of freedom. For there is neither virtue nor development
in finding the path if we are guided. We do rely
on that power for movement—­and in the moments
when it is withdrawn we are helpless. Both the
power and the reason are God’s.”

“But the Church,” I was moved by some
untraced thought to ask, “you believe there
is a future for the Church?”

“A church of all those who disseminate truth,
foster open-mindedness, serve humanity and radiate
faith,” he replied—­but as though he
were speaking to himself, not to me....

A few moments later there was a knock at the door,
and the woman of the house entered to say that Dr.
Hepburn had arrived. I rose and shook Krebs’s
hand: sheer inability to express my emotion drove
me to commonplaces.